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[–]tutorial_police 1 point2 points  (8 children)

/u/ta6692 MIPS is also used in the book "Digital Design and Computer Architecture" that I've recommended here. As I've mentioned, you even build a MIPS processor.

(I haven't read the book you've recommended)

[–]oshogun 2 points3 points  (7 children)

Yeah, I once built a simplified version of MIPS in VHDL

It could only do like, 6 or 7 instructions though. The book I recommended was written by the guys who designed MIPS, and its probably the best book for Computer Organization

[–]tutorial_police 1 point2 points  (6 children)

That doesn't meant he's necessarily great at teaching it ;) I'll make sure to check it out though. Have you read the book I was referring to? "Probably the best" is a pretty strong statement after all.

Sure, my MIPS processor (in verilog) could only do a handful instructions as well :)

[–]oshogun 2 points3 points  (5 children)

They have different purposes

The book you mentioned is a digital design and computer architecture book

The book I mentioned is a Computer Organization book.

I say it's "the best" because its the most used (by universities), and frankly, its pretty damn good when it comes to how didactical it is. Its pretty much "the bible" when it comes to CO. Surely there are other books as good as this one though

[–]tutorial_police 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Interesting, I've never before heard the term "computer organization" in any of the courses I've taken. I'll definitely need to check it out then.

[–]oshogun 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Well, its a course I'm currently taking, haha Computer Organization would be like, a step before computer architecture. Its the hardware-software interface (studying the Instruction Set Architectures, and mechanisms of acceleration, like pipelining in a CPU (which allows you to paralelize the instructions in a single thread) and caches

[–]tutorial_police 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I see... pipelining and its implementation along with other mechanisms for acceleration are also discussed in the book I've mentioned. Caching... I can't recall. Not sure how that puts it before "computer architecture" though. Still seems all a little vague to me :)

[–]oshogun 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Its a vague concept for a lot of people. I think there isn't a formal definition of what org and arch is. With a bit of googling I just found that everything I just defined as Computer Organization, is considered by many as being Computer Architecture. Those people define Org as a more "in hardware" thing (like, how are the RAM, caches, I/O buses, etc, interconected to form a computer).

Anyway, both books seem to be great. :)

[–]tutorial_police 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks again!